Mourning Bells
by waterlit
Summary: The bell tolls, and cold dark eyes lie shut forevermore, never to meet her eyes again. KandaLenalee. Oneshot.


Disclaimer: Do I look like I own anything? :/

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"Kanda, Allen, do you think this might be the house we're looking for?" Lenalee asks her comrades, pointing with a slim finger towards a musty old house sitting on a lonely plot of land.

Allen turns and gives it a good, hard stare. "I think so. It gives me a creepy feeling, though, like it's watching us… so it should be the correct house. There might be akuma hiding inside, though I doubt so. My eye isn't activated. Anyway, we should go in and check."

Kanda subjects the house to a piercing stare, too.

And then he nods.

With this, the three exorcists head cautiously towards the deserted garden sleeping around the house. They take care to check the condition of the decaying grasses and wilting flowers for signs that might reveal some clues about the sinister feeling that hangs around the house. The sight of those grotesque, twisted flowers makes Lenalee sick. What must once have been a rainbow grown from soil is now a sea of decapitated and desiccated flowers, with dry, burnt grass thrown in as garnish. _Why would anyone do such a thing to the flowers? _

Lenalee shivers. From the corners of her eyes she can see Allen and Kanda look in amazement and revulsion at the flowers and grass strewn on the mud. Even Kanda looks a little discomfited. It is easy to tell with Kanda – he would drop that stony mask of his for a minute or two, and a frown would hover over his pale features like a dark cloud on a sunny day.

They are now at the door. Allen raises his hand to knock at the door, like the gentleman he is. He raises his fist to hit the knocker. A bell clangs, deep within the bowels of the house, shaking the foundations of the wood and bricks; the house groans with a strange shivering. _I didn't know wood could shake like this…_ A shout tears through the gathering silence that envelopes the plot of land. Lenalee glances at Allen, and sees him staring at his bloodied hand.

"I took my hand off the knocker, and the red liquid was there just like that!" Allen looks shocked.

Lenalee knows better than that; that is no normal liquid, no, that is blood. Human blood, in fact; she can smell the rusty tang of the blood as if it were already in her own dry mouth. Something evil lurks within the house. She wants to shout at her friends, _don't open the door!_

But it is too late. Kanda, the unaffected, indifferent person that he is, has reached for the doorknob. His strong hand moves, and the door gives way to his strong shoulders. A breathe of cold air rushes out, tickling their legs with chilling tendrils that reek of the evil waiting within. The doorway is dark, and Lenalee thinks she can see a shadowy silhouette there, standing deep in the designed night, melting into the darkness of the empty belly of the wicked house.

Another bell tolls, somewhere in the heart of the dark desert. And she can – they can – hear a childlike voice sing a nursery rhyme with all the passion of childhood innocence. Yet, she can feel the chill rising in the air; the song dances out, whimsical, light-headed, but tinged with a touch of frost. The very words chill her fear-sharpened bones.

It is then, as the lyrics swirl around in a ghostly merry-go-round, that she understands the true meaning of the words.

She wants to cry out, but she can't. The words are stuck in her throat, frozen to her larynx, and a dark light seems to engulf the house before which they stand. She wants to sink to her knees, to pray to the abominable god, even, to grant them his mercy. But she finds herself rendered immovable, though thoughts prance with increasing velocity in her head. The wind cries now, and the darkness spins, and the frost nibbles on her exposed skin, and she feels dizzy. By the time she has found the energy to escape the void, Kanda has already put his foot onto the door ledge.

"Don't enter, Kanda!" Lenalee cries out, tears falling, the way they used to fall when she was a young child locked in her room. "Don't go in!"

He looks at her, uncomprehending.

"It's evil! The house is evil! You'll meet your death in there! Stay out here, for my sake, at least!" Lenalee bawls now.

Kanda pauses. A brief look of annoyance slithers in his eyes, before Lenalee's expression reigns his tongue in.

"Che. Don't worry. I'll be back." His thin lips curl at the edges, pulling his muscles into the semblance of a crescent smile. Then his cloak swishes, and he vanishes into the darkness beyond, feet marching in time to the rhyme she can still hear.

_Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping_  
_Brother John, Brother John?_  
_Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!_  
_Ding, ding, dong. Ding, ding, dong._

"Allen-kun!" Lenalee cries out, unable to hear the song play in her mind without crying. "Help Kanda, please!"

Allen flies in through the door. Now Lenalee is all alone outside, breathing hard, trying to clamp down on the tears. She knows that Kanda is going to die. She knows it; the song is telling her the exact same thing. But she finds she cannot move an inch.

Her legs seem to be stuck, her limbs burdened by some leaden weight she cannot see. But she can see the house eyeing her, peering at her through its shutters. It has pupils the colour of midnight, that dreadful inky shade she so detests; they are dark as sin.

It seems days before Allen finally emerges, bloodied and injured from the now quiet house, dragging an unmoving bundle with him. Lenalee sees him enter her field of vision through the misty tears that cloud her eyes.

"Is... is he dead?" she can barely speak the words.

Allen nods, unable to speak. She can see that he is too exhausted to speak, and her insides scrunch up into a leaden ball at her own imbecility. She was unable to get up and fight. Had she been able to, she would have saved the life of one of her comrades, her earliest friend in the entire order.

"Lenalee, we need to go. This house is evil." Allen finally whispers, his right hand ruffling the top of her hair lightly. He helps her up, and they summon the Ark.

Back home, her tears fall even more freely as his ghost haunts the tower where they shared so many memories. Every nook and cranny holds some echo of his quiet walk, and each time she exits her room she fully expects to see him stride out nonchalantly from the room opposite. But of late, she has never once come out to find his dark eyes on hers as they meet in the hallway. Of late, he has been lying in state in a coffin in the hall. And his funeral will be held on the morrow. At this, she sinks down to her knees and sobs again, the pain too much for her thin shoulders to bear.

She hears footsteps. They are mostly silent, gliding along the cold floor with the fluidity of the wind. They sound like Kanda's. She remembers a time – so long ago! – when she was ten and he twelve, when she had to hide from the wrath of the Central officers. She hid herself in a dark corner, hoping to stay there for some time, when she heard the slow steady footfalls on the polished ground. She was afraid then; she knew it was not the wind, though it sounded like it, for the wind could not enter this deep recess of the Order. She had peeked out in curiosity, and found the pretty boy she had once mistaken for a girl.

He had hissed at her, before whisking her to his room where she could hide in greater safety. They had become great friends after. Lenalee hears the feet stop somewhere close by her, and she fully expects to feel a cold hand on her head, to see a translucent Kanda when she looks up. But a warm pressure if applied to her head, and she looks up into the blue-gray eyes of Allen instead. _Where are the cold dark eyes I am waiting for?!_

She flails her arms wildly, and runs down the hallway, and is not seen again till the next morning. When she turns up for Kanda's funeral the next day, she is understandably dishevelled. She sits still throughout the service, stands up when everyone does, and walks to his coffin the way she is supposed to. But when she sees his perfect, flawless face lying amidst the flowers, and the white shroud draped across him, and feels the smooth, polished wood under her palms, the fact that _her_ Kanda is dead hits home.

Her hands move to his face, fingering every crevice, every fold of the pale skin. They weave through his silky hair, massaging the cold head with her warm fingertips. And she cries, for the love that she has lost, for the love of which she has not spoken, for the lover-to-be who has left like a stray kite easing its way out of a child's tender grasp. She thought to tell him about her feelings on his birthday, but the mists of time are ever hidden from man's knowledge, and good things seldom come of procrastination.

_Kanda, why did you leave like this!_ She cries bitterly, for he was her first friend at the Order. His death has torn her heart, for her world has shrunk. His love she has forsaken until the day she dies, for he knows not her love for him. _You left too soon!_ Her chapped lips twist, and her broken voice sings that ghastly song –

_Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping_  
_Brother John, Brother John?_  
_Morning bells are ringing! Morning bells are ringing!_  
_Ding, ding, dong. Ding, ding, dong._

Tears run down her face. She is hiccupping, crying and laughing at the same time. _Hysterics!_, she hears someone shout.

_I told you not to go in when we heard someone singing this dirge! I told you!_ And she laughs, at the imbecility of Kanda, that he would rather die courageous in battle than a coward who protected his own life.

That type of courage, much heralded in story and in song, has sounded the death knell for their budding love. She laughs at the world, tears streaming down her face. Hands grab at her; she can feel them, dragging and pulling, with many voices shouting in the background. The coffin moves away in a circular trajectory, and she knows, that Kanda is really truly sleeping, and that she is awake in the most terrifying nightmare that has ever been born of daylight and life.

_Kanda!_

She laughs and cries as they pull her away, and she starts to sing the echoing song again, tears and laughter streaming together until no one knows if she is crying with grief or laughing with insanity.

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A/N: I have a feeling that Kanda and Lenalee might both be ooc. But but but I don't feel like I really care right now. This doesn't have any real plot, in case you were wondering. I wrote it because… idk either lahh.

I never thought I'd see the day when I'd write KandaLenalee, but wow, the day has come! Hahaha. So yeahh just read it, enjoy it, whatever.

And of course, reviews are much appreciated (:


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